After some questionable picks, the only sure winner on Day 1 of the NFL Draft was the mobile Web.
Year-over-year, NFL Mobile from Verizon saw a 171% jump in devices reached — and a 187% increase in minutes watched — during the event’s live broadcast window, on Thursday.
Overall, the number of devices streaming the high-stakes event rose 37% to 1.3 million, the NFL said on Friday, citing Adobe analytics data. Minute-to-minute, the average streaming audience rose 38% to 38,000.
Draft Live and NFL Now were both streamed on approximately 30% more devices this year, driving more than 20% growth in total streaming minutes.
The high-stakes affair also attracted big audiences on social platforms.
On Day 1, 4.2 million Facebook users recorded a total of 9.2 million interactions with Facebook NFL Draft content, according to Nielsen Social data. Plus, there were 2.7 million Twitter interactions with NFL Draft Content on Day 1, which represented an 8% increase since last year.
Also of note, @NFL content on Twitter had 467,000 engagements, which was up 104% year-over-year.
Looking ahead to the season, tech titans including Facebook and Amazon reportedly still bidding for the right to stream the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” games, next season.
